Exploring Buda

Awoke bright and early and were out the door by 8am.. Renata wanted an early start, and that is what she got!

headed down past the opera house again and over the chain bridge and into the the lovely green city of Buda.

As soon as we'd stepped off the bridge it felt as though we were in dream land. full of castles and medievil style buildings..

headed up the mountain in the cute little silko (this cute little funicular that took 12 people up at a time and took longer than it would have to walk up! but it was cute!)

got out and walked around the palaces, had some icecream and sat in the sun in the gardens, before looking about through all the little stores selling everything from postcards and jewelery to that of toilet paper..

there was lots of construction work going on on the west side.

walked up to see mathyas church, which too was covered in scafolding, but from the bits you could see it looked amazing..

looked out through fishermans basin, which had some amazing views over Pest before heading back to the palace.

sauntered down the winding path to the bottom of the hill running into a few dead ends along the way but eventually we reached the bottom.

headed right and along the other side of the Danube, and up to one of th famous bath houses Gellert Furdo (Gellert Baths) I wasn't really that keen to going this one but went in anyway and i'm so glad i did,... it was fantastic... cost 3400 flz to use both the swimming pools and thermal pools, and the use of a towel...

but first we had to find our way in!

walked through miles of winding corridors before finally finding the womens locker rooms! where the lady demanded we change and ask no questions... so change we did!
before coming along and locking our lockers for us and giving us a number to remember...

from there we set out to find the place to pick up towels... with no help from the locker room lady we wandered about, though the mens changing area and finally someone took pity on us and took us to get our towels!

headed out to the pools...

the first one we found was the more traditional one, that was 20 degrees, it was great to go swimming again. it was such a huge part of my life, yet over here i've hardly been at all.

After we started to get cold, we jumped into the next one at more toasty bath temperature at 30 degrees... feeling little brave we went back to the 20 degree one.. so cold!

after a little while we headed through to the thermal pools, and after wandering around the massage pallor and seeing way to many naked old me, finally found the door to the spas!

it was like stepping back in time..

there was an intense heat as we stepped through the doors and two pools, one of females and one of males...hopped into the one with the other females it was a nice 36degrees

after umming and ahhing we decided to head over to the one with the men in it... the nice and hot 39 degree one... it was deliciously warm...

i love hot pools..

got talking to a lad from Ohio over here catching up with a friend from university, and had some fun with him... after it got too hot in there we decided to risk it in the 8 degree one...

now i attempted to jump right in, but only made it down the stairs as far as my thighs before losing feeling in my feet! and ran back out...

renata on the other hand was a freak of nature, happily swimming about in this freezing pool!

our new friend tried to enter the saunas off to the side and almost blacked out at the door, it was such an intense heat.. and you couldn't see a thing in the room itself.

i tried but i couldn't get past the door, i really couldn't breathe in there.

so the two of us left renata in there and headed back to the hot pools...

after awhile the need for fresh air was calling so we heade upstairs to the outdoor pools, perfect timing as one was made into a wave pool, and i just started as we came up... i'm talking propper waves, you could surf on them!
they only went for about 15mins every hour

found a sun bed and happily dozed in the sun!

had lunch of a scary chicken burger at the pool before taking photos where we weren't meant to...

but being the illegal photographer that i am... of course i would happily take them

Headed out of there and across the bridge, almost got run over a few times... seems the like to go under the roads here, andwe were trying to go aross them...

ending up having mc donalds for tea.

Headed back to the hostel late and got our things organised.